Ads from the Past: Sandler Boots, 1941

Jewish immigrants Avram and Dora Sandler opened a shoe store in north Boston before 1900. It grew into the shoe and boot factory A. Sandler Co. (later Sandler of Boston). With the boom in Alpine skiing of the mid-1930s, Sandler’s ski boots were endorsed by celebrities like Hannes Schneider and Birger Ruud. By early 1941, as German forces swept through the Soviet Union and then the mountains of Albania, the U.S. Army began equipping a few hundred troops for winter warfare, and Sandler was one of the early vendors. This ad appeared in the 1941-42 edition of the American Ski Annual, published in late summer ’41. Under the influence of Minot Dole (and the example of the Albanian campaign), the 87th Mountain Infantry formed that November at Fort Lewis, Washington—just three weeks before Pearl Harbor. 

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